A Slip On Ice During Storm Turned Into A Fight For Survival

CALL ME KELLY

At about 9:15 a.m. on Jan. 8, Paramatha Beri thought that his time had come.

The 55-year-old man was wide awake, sprawled on his back during the worst storm of the century, unable to move and speak.

"I thought it was doomsday.

"I was not unconscious. My eyes were open and I could look around and see the snow coming down on me. But I was in a complete paralysis, just like I had frozen right there.

Freezing was a very real fear.

Beri had been blowing snow from the driveway of his Hidden Valley home in Lower Macungie Township earlier in the morning. Then he took a break to make a phone call. He was returning to his car for a telephone address book when he slipped on an icy spot and fell flat on his back, hitting his head very hard on the pavement.

As he lay there, he said, "I was reviewing the situation constantly in my mind. `Is this a heart attack,' I thought. I had bypass surgery in 1990. Then I analyzed that it couldn't be a heart attack -- I can see. I'm conscious.

But the situation couldn't have been much worse. His neck was hurting. He was in danger of freezing. His wife, Shakuntla, was thousands of miles away in Delhi, India, visiting relatives. His son, Raj, and daughter-in-law, Lorie, live in Texas.

Then he began to notice slight movement coming back to his left arm and leg and his voice returned.

"I yelled a couple times, `Help! Please help!' but I think nobody heard me because of the snow walls around me.

So with only one side of his body working, Beri started to crawl on his back for the garage -- sort of a one-sided backstroke. Space was cramped and his immobile right leg caught under the tire of the car. "My right leg and arm had no sensation and it took me quite a time, 15-25 minutes, to get free from the car.

"Then I came through the garage and got stuck between another car and the wall. I managed to roll over and start crawling again."

He finally reached the door from the garage to the house which was closed, but fortunately not locked.

Lying on the ground, unable to stand up, his next obstacle was to reach the door knob. He crawled onto the stoop and tried to push himself up 30-35 times, he said, before he finally got the door open and managed to crawl inside to the warmth of the home.

There on the floor where he had left them were a pencil and a cellular phone. Using his battered and frozen left hand, he got the pencil into his mouth and dialed 911. With help on the way, he used the phone memory dial to reach his son in Texas.

He had been out in the cold more than an hour and a half. His hands were freezing, but as it turned out not frostbitten. While the ambulance, led by a snow plow, made its way to his house, his son was calling family friends who also headed to the house to help.

He credits a steady regimen of training prompted by his heart surgery, with helping him battle his way back to the house. "Six times a week I would walk four miles, ride a stationary bike and lift dumbbells. Because of my physical shape, my heart held up well."

Beri, tests revealed, has arthritis in his neck which had narrowed the spinal cord channel. Because of that, when he fell he bruised the spinal cord. He also badly abused and bruised his right shoulder and leg in his frantic efforts to get inside.

The narrow escape left him emotionally as well as physically drained. It was several days before he could talk about it without becoming emotional.

But he will recover, possibly 90-95 percent of his motion, Beri said. He is faithfully taking his therapy at Good Shepherd.

By the end of last week he was walking with a cane and on therapy parallel bars. Right now he needs assistance moving from one surface to another, but he's confident he'll get his mobility back. He expects to leave the hospital by the end of this week.

Beri is deeply grateful for the fine work of the rescue workers, who despite the snow made it to his house within an hour; the doctors and nurses of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Good Shepherd, and the concern of his son and daughter-in-law and his good friends who rushed to his side, including Al Kumar.